Welcome to On the Record, where we share the quotes that stuck from the past week in food media.

On the old Brooklyn: “For most of the twentieth century, it was Lennie to Manhattan’s George: big, dumb, and violent, with a childlike sentimentality and a funny way of talking. It was a place to come from, not a place to go to; a place where, as the theme song from Welcome Back, Kotter put it, ‘Your dreams were your ticket out.’ To move there from Manhattan was to lose the dream. It was to go into exile, where, like some party of Eastern European patriots, you spent your days plotting your return.” — Booze and history writer David Wondrich [Esquire]

On selling out by doing a TV show like The Taste: “‘Sell out’? Like Scripps (Food Net owners and owners of Travel) are some kind of an indie label? I sold out the first time I ever agreed to work a brunch shift. The question for me is always — was it fun? Answer. Yes.” — Anthony Bourdain [Grubstreet]

On the health risks of being a chef: “Being a chef caught up with me. In the past I might have tasted butter-laden mashed potatoes at the restaurant to check the seasoning. And then I’d have another taste because well, they taste good. Suddenly you’ve had five teaspoons of mashed potatoes. ” — Top Chef alum Richard Blais [Wall Street Journal]

On why people get so upset about eating horses: “[H]ere’s where one of those pesky scientific facts some people choose to avoid comes in — pigs are more intelligent than horses. That’s how pigs and boars thrive so well in the wild. They also have great personalities, and can understand fear and pain. But we can’t ride a pig. Our kids can’t hop on a pig and ride them like they can a pony. We can’t pump them full of steroids until their bones can’t even hold up their muscles and watch them run around a track really fast. We can’t train them to hop over hurdles, and run after little calves that we’ll rope up and then throw our hands in the air like we’ve done something monumental. Hell, we can’t even attach a carriage to them and ride them through the streets of Philadelphia. They’re just a dirty, rolling in the mud, dumb old pig … clearly not as important as the horse.” — Marc Vetri, Philadelphia-based chef and restaurateur [Huffington Post]

On the most poorly behaved celebrities at restaurants: “[Lea Michele] is the worst. The actual worst. Endlessly harassed her server, making fun of him when he tried to explain the ingredients of a dish, told him he didn’t know what he was talking about, complained to multiple managers, and sent her dad to knock on the windows of the kitchen looking for her food after less than twenty minutes (she had ordered well-done fish and cited multiple allergies), saying it had been hours. She was a bitch and a brat, and her family was the same way. Miserable to wait on, and left a 10% tip, even after items had been taken off. The. Worst.” — Alexis Rhiannon, blogger [Crushable]